Soundings (E. Vance for BMMR)
BMMR has now been in existence for nearly 6 months. We have a diversified editorial board, one that includes scholars of different age brackets, genders, and disciplines, and we have a fine example to follow in BMCR. On more practical level, we also have a well-tuned editorial mechanism created by Paul Remley, Managing Editor, to handle the journal's affairs. Best of all, we have an international readership which, combined with BMR, tops 1500, and is growing fast. We believe that we have the possibility of becoming the main review organ for medieval studies within the forseeable future.
To date, only a handful of reviews have appeared, and we are eager to live up to our potential. Readers have been very responsive to the lists of books that are available for reviewing, but this is not sufficient. Presses have not yet become aware of the journal, and will do so only when we send them copies of published reviews. Such has been the pattern at BMCR. What we need now is requests from the readership for review copies of specific books. Paul remley (remley@u.washington.edu) will use BMMR letterhead to write for copies of those books and will send them to you.
However, it is also appropriate for you to write reviews of recent books that you already have in your possession. Such is the case especially with foreign presses, which do not really play the American market. We urge you, then, to take this initiative. We also urge our colleagues in Europe, the Mideast and Africa to keep a close eye on local publications which deserve reviews and which will never reach audiences and libraries without those reviews.
Many of you will be seeing book displays at meetings of the learned societies like the MLA and the AHA. Please make note of recent books that interest you as subjects of a review, and contact Paul, so that he can request copies of them for you. Also, since many of you will have generous breaks between semesters, now is a good time to foresee writing a review. Having just published my first review (of Henry Ansgar Kelly's "Ideas and Forms of Tragedy," I can tell you how thrilling it is to labor for several days on a review and have it published in "minutes" after its completion, only to have feedback start the next day— not 4 years later.
Best wishes the holidays and for 1994.
Eugene Vance, University of Washington.